NOW-TIME TV, an exhibition by Joen Vedel, explores the close relationship between revolts and the moving image. Challenging traditional portrayals of political upheavals—with a beginning and end, and where the event is distinguished from its mediation—revolts are here conceived as ongoing, transformative forces, where the occurrence and its representation are increasingly intertwined.

Joen Vedel has over the course of decades recorded many different protest movements, from Occupy Wall Street in New York, the Yellow Vest movement in France, the Kurdish feminist movement, protests against austerity measures in Greece and the uprising in Brazil in response to structural violence. Shying away from iconic, easily digestible images, he instead centered on what exceeds the event of the revolts: waiting periods, cleanups and disappointments, and the aftermath.

As a continuation of this documentary approach, Vedel has developed an experimental methodology where he adopts live video editing technologies and techniques—habitually used by mainstream media to streamline narratives—to instead examine the dynamism and multi-layered complexity of ongoing political unrest. To reject the historian’s demand of establishing a clear start and end point of the revolts as well as to insist that they are present even if they are out of sight.

The basis for the exhibition is an intensive production during its first three days, where live-editing sessions combine live taping in collaboration with multiple collaborators, found footage, Vedel’s own recordings, and the presence of the audience. Over the remainder of the show’s duration, three episodes entitled Endings, Intervals, and Beginnings will be screened in Kunstnernes Hus Cinema and online. Giving emphasis to the multiple and overlapping protest movements erupting across the globe in recent history, NOW-TIME TV interrogates the revolt as a present condition, connecting the potentials, desires, and missed opportunities of the recent past as well as history in the making.

Joen Vedel is a visual artist, writer and researcher, educated at the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts, Whitney Independent Study Program in New York and currently a PhD fellow at the Academy of Fine Arts in Trondheim. Vedel primarily works with video, sound, text, performance and in various forms of collaborations. He has been a member of numerous artist and activist collectives and self-organized spaces. He has exhibited widely internationally and participated at Documenta 15 in Kassel, amongst others.

The exhibition is supported by the Danish Arts Foundation, the Norwegian Photographic Fund, and the Fund for Sound and Image.